1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a guitar for a guitar synthesizer. More specifically, the present invention relates to a guitar for a guitar synthesizer for generating a synthesized guitar sound based on the fundamental frequency detected by picking up a string vibration obtained by touching the strings of the guitar.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A typical conventional guitar synthesizer is disclosed for example in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,357,852, issued Nov. 9, 1982 to Noboru Suenaga and assigned to the same assignee as the present application. The above referenced patent is incorporated herein by reference. Such a guitar synthesizer picks up a string vibration obtained by touching the strings of a guitar to detect the fundamental frequency of the string vibration, by which a guitar sound is synthesized. For this reason, in such a guitar synthesizer, a fundamental frequency component needs to be provided more stably than in a conventional electric guitar.
A conventional guitar, electric guitar or in a guitar for guitar synthesizer has an elongated neck. As a result, by the vibration generated in the neck or the body through the influence of the strings vibrated in the performance of the guitar, two or three or more than three dead points are unavoidably generated in some musical intervals on the finger board of the neck. Even if such dead points are generated in a conventional guitar or electric guitar, vibration of the strings per se becomes a sound, which causes no problem because of the live performance.
However, in a guitar synthesizer, a sound generated by pressing a dead point is attenuated extraordinarily rapidly, whereby the sound is insufficiently sustained. Accordingly it may happen that the fundamental wave of the sound has died away rapidly and only the harmonics remain. Due to the phase deviation caused by the vibration in the frets between the fundamental wave component and a harmonic at the rise of the vibration of the strings, it may happen that the fundamental wave component has disappeared in and hence is no longer present. Furthermore, since the vibration waveform of the string is changed due to the above stated phase deviation, sometimes a fundamental wave cannot be extracted correctly.
In addition, it may happen that the vibration direction of the touched string changes under the influence of vibration of the neck or the body, causing a non-sensitive region where a sound signal is stopped due to the positional relation between the direction of the string vibration and the pickup. If a fundamental sound has died away rapidly, leaving only the harmonics, or if a sound signal from a pickup is stopped as described above, such a synthesizer would operate erroneously, causing an inconvenience in the performance.
Accordingly, a guitar having no dead point and causing no stop of a sound signal is desirable. For avoiding the above described disadvantages, a neck of a guitar might be made thick enough so as not to be vibrated easily. However, such approach for stopping the vibration of the neck results in a neck which is too thick making it difficult to press the finger board and accordingly such a guitar is impractical as a musical instrument. Another approach for damping vibrations, may involve shortening the guitar neck by positioning the junction of the neck and the body nearer to the head side of the neck without changing the distance between a nut and a bridge for supporting the strings, in other words without changing the length of the strings, namely the length of the finger board.
However, in such approach, if one wants to play the guitar by pressing the "high position", such a construction of the body would become an obstruction to proper performance. A further approach may be considered in which a reinforcement core made of steel, for example, is inserted in the interior of the guitar neck generally made of a light material. However, this approach also involves disadvantages that the neck becomes heavy, causing a bad balance of weight in the instrument. Another disadvantage of inserting a reinforcement into the neck is seen in that the inserting is difficult and hence the insertion may lower productivity and cause a high percentage of defective products. As a further approach, it may be considered that a weight is attached to the head at the top of the neck to make the head heavy so that the head portion cannot be vibrated easily. However, in order to prevent the vibration by this approach, a weight of at least 1 kg must be attached to the head and as a result, the weight balance of the guitar would be lost, causing difficulties in using such a guitar in a musical performance.